LA Bantam and Red Arrow - A Shared Author

The two early short-lived mass market paperback publishers that share this blog also share one author - Agatha Christie. With the 120th anniversary of her birthday just four days away this is a good time to compare her treatment by these two publishers.

It is not surprising Christie is the one author shared by the two publishers. Generally accepted as the second best selling author of all time (behind Shakespeare with an estimated 2 - 4 billion books sold) Christie's books are among the earliest published by the early mass market publishers. The early Dell version of The Tuesday Club Murders is below.

The LA Bantam is a collection of five stories chosen from an original 13 that were published as The Thirteen Problems in England and as The Tuesday Club Murders in the US in 1931. The Red Arrow is a novel originally published in 1934 as Lord Edgware Dies. Later that year it was published in the United States as Thirteen At Dinner. Both examples below are the text only covers. They exist in illustrated versions also.

Red Arrow 1 - 1939

Bantam 26 - 1940

Dell 8 - 1943